Why do dictators keep disrupting so many other countries? Miranda Patrucić on what China and Russia are doing in neighboring nations, developing states, and the world’s most powerful democracies.
On December 6, Romania’s Constitutional Court threw out the first-round results of the country’s presidential elections, after a shocking victory by the relatively obscure, pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu. The reason for the court’s decision? Clear signs of extensive foreign-influence operations behind Georgescu’s win.
Just before the decision, Romanian intelligence services released evidence showing that Moscow had paid TikTok influencers, right-wing groups, and various actors with ties to organized crime to promote Georgescu online. Authorities later raided properties belonging to a Georgescu donor suspected of voter bribery, money laundering, and computer fraud. Intelligence files showed the donor had given Georgescu’s campaign €1 million, of which €360,000 went to TikTok.
Georgescu won the first round with 23 percent of the vote, even though polls shortly before the election had shown his support below 10 percent. He says he spent no money on his campaign, but in the two weeks before the vote, interest in it soared on TikTok, as tens of thousands of new accounts began touting Georgescu relentlessly. And since the now-annulled election, his popularity has only increased, with voting rescheduled for May. No one has made any charges of ballot tampering.
A Kremlin attempt to manipulate voting in an EU member state may be astonishing, but it belongs to a pattern. During Moldova’s presidential election and referendum on EU membership in October, Moscow sent more than US$15 million to the bank accounts of more than 130,000 Moldovan citizens to buy the favor of domestic political parties and proxy supporters, or even to buy votes outright.
In Georgia, extensive protests continue over the public accounting of general-election results, also from October. Officially, a pro-Russian party won, but Salome Zourabichvili, the country’s outgoing president says—with the support of international observers—that Moscow was behind vote tampering that denied her party the decisive victory it was headed for.
Meanwhile, authorities in Ukraine have reported that Moscow spent some $350 million on election interference in 2019 alone.
Russia’s election-interference tactics first gained global attention during the U.S. presidential election in 2016, after which the Department of Justice ultimately indicted 13 Russians, along with Paul Manafort—the former head of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—on charges including money laundering and bank fraud in attempts to swing the election to Trump. What is all of this?
Miranda Patrucić is the editor in chief of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists with operations on six continents. Patrucić says Russia, like China and other autocratic states, has been running corruption and influence operations around the world with a varied but clear set of goals. In some countries, it’s mainly economic advantage. But more often, it’s also geopolitical advantage—or even undermining democracy itself. Beijing and Moscow are invested in corroding the legitimacy and stability of democratic systems—in neighboring countries especially, but in fledgling and established democracies worldwide, too— because the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin both see the flourishing of democratic life and leadership as threats to their own autocratic systems …
From Altered States, a print extra from The Signal x the Human Rights Foundation.
Michael Bluhm: Ben Freeman says that while they’re not the biggest players in the U.S., where so much money goes into legal influence operations, China and Russia are doing the most to corrupt other countries globally. Would you agree with that?
Miranda Patrucić: China and Russia, by far— particularly in the amount of money they spend on trying to control or destabilize democracies.
In 2013, China began its Belt and Road Initiative to connect Asia, Africa, and Europe by investing in infrastructure and natural-resource development at a scale never seen before in many parts of the world. Beijing has since used this initiative as an intentional vehicle for corruption—for instance, by putting much more money into a project than it needs and then insisting the recipients keep the accounting to themselves. What do you think happens? Over the last 12 years, there’s been documented corruption associated with Belt and Road in at least 10 countries. For China, this kind of thing has been very effective at creating dependencies and enabling control.
China also often recruits spies to commit industrial espionage and uses its presence in foreign countries to intimidate dissidents. In one recent case in America, three guys allegedly stalked and harassed a family living in New Jersey with the aim of forcing the father to return to China, where he could have faced the death penalty on embezzlement charges.
At the same time, Russia is funneling huge amounts of money into destabilizing countries politically, where the Kremlin sees an interest in it. Georgescu’s surprise showing as a presidential candidate in Romania is a good example.
Bluhm: What countries would be the main targets for these sorts of corruption efforts?
Patrucić: The most important targets are the most powerful countries trying to advance democracy in the world—above all, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the member states of the European Union. And you’ve already seen them targeted: Some of the particulars may still be in question, but Russia clearly interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections in favor of Donald Trump.
"Most countries in the world don’t have long histories of democratic rule. Most countries don’t have long histories of free speech or the rule of law. Most were subject to colonial rule, and many have been ruled by dictators for decades."
These countries are the most important targets in the sense that they have the most influence, and they’re invested in the spread and sustainability of democracy globally. They model democracy and they promote it.
But they’re not the most vulnerable targets. It’s important to understand that most countries in the world don’t have long histories of democratic rule, if they have any histories of it at all. Most countries don’t have long histories of free speech or the rule of law. Most were subject to colonial rule, and many, whether they were colonized or not, have been ruled by dictators for decades.
As a result, a lot of newer democracies are still volatile—and still contain forces invested in seeing democracy fail. That’s where China and Russia find a lot of ready and willing collaborators.
Bluhm: How do you see their main goals in cultivating corruption?
Patrucić: The goals are very different in different places. It’s highly context-dependent. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, one of China’s main goals is securing access to natural resources.
There, Beijing looks for ways to funnel money non- transparently into countries—and in particular, to their ruling elites, to get them into Beijing’s pocket. That harms these countries’ economies, by incentivizing outcomes that benefit corrupted elites over the countries as a whole. But it boosts trade with China. It boosts dependency on China. And it boosts China’s standing in the world.
In post-Soviet countries like Georgia, the goal is more political.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Georgia had developed into a free, democratic country. It was a beacon. It had open-records rules and easy access to independent information. It was a place other post-Soviet countries could look at as a model, even as one of its neighbors, Azerbaijan, remained an extremely corrupt dictatorship. But for months now, people in Georgia have been protesting on the streets against Russian efforts to manipulate their country’s election. Similarly in Moldova or Romania.
Here, the purpose of corruption isn’t mainly economic, though Russia and other autocracies do prefer trade with countries more like themselves. The purpose isn’t even mainly political in the sense of trying simply to steal an election for a candidate friendly to Russian interests. The purpose of corruption is political in the deeper sense of trying to undermine democracy as a system—and so, suppress that system’s entire capacity to enable freedom of speech, self-determination, or solidarity with other democratic forces, through supporting Ukraine against Russia, joining NATO, or otherwise.
Russia sees it as vastly in its interest to have loyal, autocratic countries near its border. It sees democratic neighbors as a threat to its autocratic system. You know, a lot of Russians go to Georgia for vacation. Moscow doesn’t want Russians vacationing in a democracy. It doesn’t want a Georgia that resembles the West. It wants a Georgia that resembles Russia.
In Western countries, the goals are different still.
Gulf autocracies—the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—have strong alliances across developed democracies like the United States or the United Kingdom. And they have strong incentives to pour a lot of money into formal, legal channels of influence in order to optimize those alliances—and the outcomes from them.
"Russia sees democratic neighbors as a threat to its autocratic system. A lot of Russians go to Georgia for vacation. Moscow doesn’t want Russians vacationing in a democracy. It doesn’t want a Georgia that resembles the West. It wants a Georgia that resembles Russia."
But China and Russia have less of an opportunity to do this now, and where they can, they use darker channels—either to promote their interests, to suppress a competing democracy’s capacity to interfere with their interests, or even to suppress that democracy’s fundamental capacity to function effectively. They don’t want a strong U.S. promoting democracy abroad, for example, least of all among Russia’s neighbors—or in Taiwan. They don’t want a strong U.K. implementing laws to prevent corrupt Russians from holding or laundering assets there. And generally, they don’t want strong democracies with high degrees of cohesion or common purpose as free societies.
Bluhm: What are some of the main ways they’re trying to do this?
Patrucić: Sometimes they find politicians who believe that what they’re doing isn’t so bad—or might even be good. There are plenty of politicians in the West who think Vladimir Putin’s way is the right way—in politics, in culture, in world leadership. They think he knows what he’s doing. They see him as someone who’s important and strong, and deserves respect—and that Western countries are unfair to him. Sometimes they find ways to get money to these politicians.
Meanwhile, a lot of dirty money is going into universities and cultural institutions. The children of many autocratic officials—Chinese, Russian, or otherwise—are educated in the West, and these officials often give donations to their kids’ schools, to promote their families’ and countries’ interests.
Beijing has made a point of working to gain access to people in key governmental positions, too. A few months ago, U.S. federal prosecutors charged Linda Sun, an aide to two New York governors—Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul— and Sun’s husband, Chris Hu, with being agents of the Chinese government and working to block Taiwanese interests from getting onto the governors’ calendars. They were paid in cash, real estate, travel expenses, and, apparently, Nanjing- style salted ducks.
Autocrats also love to try corrupting journalists, often specifically targeting those who understand or position themselves as anti-establishment figures. That can be with millions of dollars, which the U.S. Department of Justice recently charged two employees of the Russian state-controlled media company RT with funneling to an American outlet. Or it can be on a much smaller scale but still meaningful. China, in particular, likes to give free trips to journalists from the U.S. or other developed democracies, who’ve then promoted the People’s Republic, saying, I’ve seen a different side of the country now—and you know, it has a lot going for it.
Before the elections in Moldova last year, my organization reported that a foundation created by a pro-Russian actor had been giving people debit cards with monthly stipends. He’d been taking social-media influencers on trips to Russia and getting them to promote Russia and the country’s political agenda.
China and Russia do use some different strategies and tactics. Beijing tends to try corrupting countries openly through trade, as with the Belt and Road Initiative. Moscow tends to work much more behind the scenes. It doesn’t do big, China- style public projects; Russian money goes more secretly to political parties and media outlets.
"They don’t want a strong U.S. promoting democracy abroad. They don’t want a strong U.K. implementing laws to prevent corrupt Russians from holding or laundering assets there. And generally, they don’t want strong democracies with high degrees of cohesion or common purpose as free societies."
Of course, there is also plenty of evidence of both China and Russia manipulating journalists and social-media platforms to spread disinformation and generally confuse people within an established democracy or erode trust among them—as you saw with Russia’s efforts to manipulate public sentiment during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections. Now people are bombarded with news on TikTok or Telegram or whatever, and seeing the same message hundreds or thousands of times can be very persuasive. People trust established or mainstream media less and less, meanwhile, which has created a new environment of opportunity for autocrats.
Bluhm: How effective have these corruption techniques been?
Patrucić: Very. China keeps winning business contracts around the world, even though they have a poor track record from some previous contracts, where the money flows weren’t at all transparent.
Russia has benefited from election results in Georgia, Moldova, and Romania all shifting toward favoring Russia since the previous elections— even though we still lack evidence about the full extent of Russia’s meddling there. In Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan used to be a relatively free country, but the new, pro-Russian president has drastically restricted civil liberties.
There are emerging trends, too. One is this recent surge we’ve seen of money, often with no clear source, into Romania and other young democracies of Eastern Europe—to the election campaigns of candidates who support closer ties with Russia and oppose their countries’ support for Ukraine. Relatedly, it seems, we’re seeing Russia sending military advisers into these young democracies to train local sympathizers in destabilization techniques, sometimes involving the use of violent protests.
Another emerging trend is Russia globally expanding its deployment of political consultants to shape the images and campaigns of politicians it wants to promote. In 2020, a Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded the Russian government had disrupted the U.S. elections in 2016. That report says that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort worked closely with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the report identified as a Russian intelligence officer. Recently, Manafort and Kilimnik have even tried working up peace plans for Ukraine together. So direct contact continues.
Many are familiar with the Kremlin’s projected image of Vladimir Putin as a leader—often shirtless, usually doing something rugged out in the wilderness. It’s an image of strength and fearlessness—a real man. Now Russian political consultants are trying the same strategy abroad. In Bosnia, for instance—which is trying to build a democracy—we saw Russian political consultants come in and develop the same image for local politicians, and advise them in election campaigns. It’s funny, in a way—but it can work, which I suppose is not. And they’re doing it around the world.
Overall, anti-democratic forces are gaining ground globally, using algorithmic digital environments to play on division and anger among people, along with legitimate grievances about poor government performance. But understanding how this works and defending against it are challenges. The money behind it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to track. Neither do researchers yet entirely know how and why these destabilization campaigns succeed on social media. We don’t really understand social-media platforms’ algorithms for promoting content at all. Which leaves the door open to undetectable manipulation and interference of all sorts. TikTok didn’t even exist before September 2016.
